Global Warming 'Skeptic' Gets Big Bucks From Coal Burning Industries

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Wave enough money and someone will take the bait. One of the last global warming skeptics is accepting large donations from air polluters. The ocean continues to degrade as the Eastern Pacific heats up and China's pollution is reaching America. Time for us to clean up our own act, right?

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association of Sedalia, Colo., gave Michaels $100,000 and started the fund-raising drive, said Stanley Lewandowski, IREA's general manager. He said one company planned to give $50,000 and a third plans to give Michaels money next year.

"We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists," Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to launch a counterattack on "alarmist" scientists and specifically Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Michaels and Lewandowski are open about the money and see no problem with it. Some top scientists and environmental advocates call it a clear conflict of interest. Others view it as the type of lobbying that goes along with many divisive issues.

This money is only if this 'scientist' delivers the goods. If he finds there is global warming due to industry pollution, we know the money will be yanked. Since a very fat rope is attached to this money, it negates all the research findings of this professor. Besides, has this man tossed out his airconditioners? If not, I will happily remove them for him.

FLORENCE - Dying phytoplankton have once again sucked all the oxygen out of the water along a stretch of the Oregon Coast this summer, creating a hypoxic dead zone that kills any underwater marine life trapped in it.

It is the fifth year in a row that researchers have spotted a dead zone in Oregon waters. And this year, it's bigger than ever, enveloping half of Washington state's coast as well.
"Something about the system that's very fundamental has changed," said Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine ecologist who has studied the phenomenon.

Um, dead zones are bad. They shouldn't happen. The dead zones are growing more frequent and extending greater and greater acerage. The one at the mouth of the Mississippi is gigantic, for example. The super-hot summer this year along the West Coast is aggravating this situation. I read somewhere about how small octopi are desperately climbing up out of the water on any lines thrown by fishermen and how all the lobster type traps are coming up with only dead animals inside.

The tiny, airborne particles Cliff gathers at an air monitoring station just north of San Francisco drifted over the ocean from coal-fired power plants, smelters, dust storms and diesel trucks in China and other Asian countries.

Researchers say the environmental impact of China's breakneck economic growth is being felt well beyond its borders. They worry that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the U.S. could see a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns

Of course, pollution from America is carried on the prevailing winds from the south and west to my state on the East Coast and it is very filthy in summer! Of course, these newspaper stories don't mention that. Nor do they note that we are the biggest polluters on earth and we are also the entity that refused to sign onto the Kyoto Accords. Maybe the Chinese will make us chocke so bad, we finally smell the coffee and fix our own backyard.

Lake County, east of Cleveland, declared a state of emergency. County Administrator Kenneth R. Gauntner Jr. estimated at least 100 people had been evacuated and all available rescue boats had been pressed into service.

We have been hammered here in New England this last week. Just a few minutes ago, another rain cell dumped a ton of water on our mountain. This is the wettest summer we have had since I moved here in 1990. Rain is increased if there is fine particulate matter in the stratosphere and our collective burning of coal certainly is putting a lot of this up there especially since everyone uses really tall chimneys which launches the particulates much higher than when I run my little woodstove, for example.

The desertifcation that is getting worse and worse plus vehicles that kick up lots of dirt when driving on bone-dry roads also puts a lot of dust into the atmosphere though it doesn't go as high up except in high winds like we saw during the Great Depression, for example. I have seen red dust from the loess plains of Manchuria make it all the way over here when there has been big fall storms.

“There’s been a huge increase in the number of incidents, in large part because what had once been urban problems are now happening deep in the backwoods,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group representing about 10,000 people who work on public lands, which compiled the assault figures.

At the same time, the number of rangers with police power has been nearly halved in the last decade, to 550 from more than 980 because of budget cuts and because some rangers have been assigned to other duties. There is now one law enforcement ranger for every 291,000 acres, or one for every 733,000 visitors, according to Forest Service figures.

This is identical to Bush and the GOP cutting back on border patrols after 9/11. They don't have even the slightest interest in protecting America. Well, they are selling off our country. I just learned the GOP won't pass a pay hike for minimum wage workers without adding yet another tax cut for the very rich.

Shame, shame, shame on you all. A dead planet won't be a good place to hold cocktail parties.

Comments

HHH Yes, the design of national policy is important, how our economic development plans for the next five years, how the implementation, how to make our economy even faster. Are designed to advance our focus to invest money in what ways it should be carefully arranged.